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Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 By: J. Franklin Jameson (1859-1937) |
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By Various
J.F. Jameson, Editor LETTER OF REVEREND JONAS MICHAELIUS, 1628.
Reference material and source. Michaelius, Reverend Jonas. "Letter of Reverend Jonas
Michaelius, 1628." In J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Narratives
of New Netherland, 1609 1664 (Original Narratives of Early
American History). NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909. INTRODUCTION THE established church in the United Netherlands was the Reformed
Church. Its polity was that of Geneva or of Presbyterianism. The
minister and ruling or lay elders of the local church formed its
consistory, corresponding to the Scottish or American kirk session. The
next higher power, administrative or judicial, resided in the classis,
consisting of all the ministers in a given district and one elder from
each parish therein, and corresponding to the presbytery. It had power
to license and ordain, install and remove ministers. Above this body
stood the provincial synod, and above that the (occasional) national
synods. In 1624 the synod of North Holland decreed that supervision
over the churches in the East Indies should belong to the churches and
classes within whose bounds were located the various "chambers" of the
East India Company. The same rule was applied in the case of the West
India Company's settlements. Under this rule the first minister sent out
to New Netherland was placed under the jurisdiction of the Classis
of Amsterdam, since the colony was under the charge of the Amsterdam
Chamber. Many extracts from the minutes of that classis, and what
remains of its correspondence with the ministers in New Netherland,
are printed in the volumes published by the State of New York under the
title Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York (six volumes, Albany,
1901 1905). From 1639, if not earlier, a committee of the classis,
called "Deputati ad Res Exteras," was given charge of most of the
details of correspondence with the Dutch Reformed churches in America,
Africa, the East and foreign European countries. As mentioned by Wassenaer, "comforters of the sick," who were
Ecclesiastical officers but not ministers, were first sent Out to New
Netherland. The first minister was Reverence Jonas Jansen Michielse, or,
to employ the Latinized form of his name which he, according to clerical
habit, was accustomed to use, Jonas Johannis Michaelius. Michaelius was
born in North Holland in 1577, entered the University of Leyden as a
student of divinity in 1600, became minister at Nieuwbokswoude in 1612
and at Hem, near Enkhuizen, in 1614. At some time between April, 1624,
and August, 1625, he went out to San Salvador (Bahia, Brazil), recently
conquered by the West India Company's fleet, and after brief service
there to one Of their posts on the West African coast. Returning thence,
He was, early in 1628, sent out to Manhattan, where he arrived April 7.
It is not known just when he returned to Holland, but he appears to have
been under engagement for three years. In 1637 1638 we find the classis
vainly endeavoring to send him again to New Netherland, but prevented
by the Company, which had a veto upon all such appointments in its
dominions. About half a century ago the following precious letter of Michaelius,
describing New Netherland as it appeared in its earliest days to the
eyes of an educated clergyman of the Dutch Church, was discovered
in Amsterdam, and printed by Mr. J.J.Bodel Nijenhuis in the
Kerk historisch Archief , part I. An English translation of it, with an
introduction, was then privately printed in a pamphlet by Mr. Henry C.
Murphy, an excellent scholar in New Netherland history, who was at that
time minister of the United States to the Netherlands. This pamphlet,
entitled The First Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in the United
States (The Hague, 1858), was reprinted in 1858 in Documents relative
to the Colonial History of the State of New York , II. 757 770, in 1881
in the Collections of the New York Historical Society , XIII, and in
1883, at Amsterdam, by Frederik Muller and Co... Continue reading book >>
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